What research is being done with stem cells?

Scientists are investigating how stem cells form tissues and organs, how aging impacts their function and their role in various diseases and conditions. A better understanding of the inner working of living organisms leads to earlier detection, better diagnosis and more effective treatments for diseases and injury.

Is stem cell research good?

Researchers and doctors hope stem cell studies can help to: Increase understanding of how diseases occur. By watching stem cells mature into cells in bones, heart muscle, nerves, and other organs and tissue, researchers and doctors may better understand how diseases and conditions develop.

Is stem cell research hard?

However, human stem cells can be difficult to obtain and manipulate; experiments on human embryonic stem cells often require oversight by ethics boards and face funding restrictions, so new techniques tend to be developed first in mouse cells and then adapted to human ones.

Who says stem cell research is wrong?

Some opponents of stem cell research argue that it offends human dignity or harms or destroys human life. Proponents argue that easing suffering and disease promotes human dignity and happiness, and that destroying a blastocyst is not the same as taking a human life.

Why are stem cells illegal?

The court order is the outcome of a lawsuit originally filed last August against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, which contends that federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells is illegal because it requires the …

Why is stem cell illegal?

The only stem cell products approved by the FDA are a few derived from umbilical cord blood, and then only for a very limited category of blood system diseases. Under FDA regulations, most stem cell treatments being sold to customers are illegal. That’s because the products are deemed to be unlicensed drugs.